Page 14-THE NEWS-September, 1984
X^X
JUUB
Jewish Books in Review
is a service of the IWB lewish Book Council,
15 East 26th St., New York, N.Y. 70070
How Many Jewish Mothers
Does It Take To Change
A Light Bulb??
The Haj. By Leon Uris. Double
day, 245 Park Avenue, New
York, NY 10167. 1984. 566
pages. $17.95.
Reviewed by David C. Gross
Leon Uris, whose novel Ex
odus, describing the struggle
for the establishment of Israel,
was a worldwide bestseller, is
a writer with a passion — in all
of his books dealing with
Jewish themes he seeks to
show that the Jewish people
have been targets for nearly
two thousand years, and now,
in the twentieth century,
despite the Holocaust, they
have created a Jewish state,
built on the foundations of
justice for all, that will be for
all time a haven for all Jews in
need.
For many years literary
circles buzzed with rumors
that he was working on a se
quel to Exodus, assuming that
he would bring the story up to
date from the War of In
dependence to today. Instead,
Uris has produced a powerful,
memorable novel that tells the
story of Palestinian Jews and
the Palestinian Arabs prior to
Israel’s establishment and
during the early years of
Israel. And the story is seen
and told from the Arab side.
This is no easy task for a
Jewish writer, pa^cul£u*ly one
who has become known as a
partisan of Israel. And yet
Uris has succeeded admirably
in his task. What emerges is
an insightful explanation of
why, for nearly four decades,
the Arabs have persisted in
seeking to kill Israelis rather
than sit down and talk peace.
As perhaps might have been
expected, most reviewers have
criticized the novel as being
too one-sided, too strong in its
delineation of the Arab side,
with little or no attempt to
show where Israel erred.
We’ll make some admis
sions: Uris is not a great
novelist in the way Dickens
was. Some of the language
could have used a sharp copy
editor. That having been said.
LEON
URIS
what emerges from the pages
of this book is a carefully
researched work portraying
what the Arabs did, how the
vast majority of them were
manipulated by morally cor
rupt leaders, how their
religious faith led them to a
position of seeing Israel as
“evil,” and how the vast ma
jority of Arabs continue to
blind themselves to the truth.
Put another way. The Haj
explains how, from the very
beginning of the Zionist move
ment, the idealistic Jews who
came to Palestine sought to
live in peace with their Arab
neighbors but were rebuffed
virtually at every turn, and
how this extremist fanaticism
of the Arab masses and the
vile leadership of many of their
political personalities has con
tinued — to this day — to
build a house of hate whose
foundations sooner or later
must collapse.
Uris does not say that the
Arab people are inherently evU
and blood-thirsty. He simply
cites their own teachings that
emphasize blind obedience —
to the head of the family, the
head of the village, the head of
the conununity — and shows
how this has 1^ to the present
situation. As one of the few
Arabs in the novel who
favored a peaceful coexistence
with the Jews puts it: We, the
Arabs, are consumed with
hate, and they, the Jews, are
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filled with love. And unless we
learn to love, we are doomed.
The Haj in the novel’s title
is the muktar of the fictional
village of Tabah. Although il
literate, he is wise in the ways
of leadership. When a kibbutz
is set up nearby in the years
before Israeli statehood, he at
first fumes and rages. When
he gets to know the kibbutz
head, on a man-to-man basis,
he admits first to himself and
then to the kibbutznik, Gideon
Asch, that he considers the
Jew his only true friend
because only with him can he
be open and honest. With
everyone else in the Arab
world he must maintain a false
front. Asch and the Haj
become close but secret
friends.
When the United Nations
proclaims a Jewish state and
an Arab state in British-
mandated Palestine, in 1947,
the Tabah villagers, led by
Ibrahim, the Haj, flee to
escape the coming war — com
mitting the most terrible
mistake of their lives.
What was once a communi
ty of peacful villagers becomes
a group of Arab refugees.
Women are raped by merciless
Iraqi soldiers. Hunger and suf
fering abound. For a while
Ibrahim and his family hide in
the caves of ancient Qumran
near the Dead Sea, but then
they are forced by famine to
join thousands of helpless
Arab refugees in miserable
camps supported by the west.
The only time the Arab states
appear on the scene is to
recruit fedayeen, precursors of
today’s brainwashed PLO
terrorists.
In short, Uris tells it like it
was and like it is. He wishes
there were some way to reach
the mass of Arabs, to show
them that they have been ex
ploited by pro-Hilter Muftis
and a variety of venal leaders
who care nothing for their
well-being. He ends his book
on a dismal note, for to date no
one, including the author, has
found a way to cut through
the lies and distortions that
have been fed to two genera
tions of Arabs in order to keep
the anti-Israel pot boiling.
Those critics who assail
Uris’s new novel as being too
partisan and one-sided are
right: It is totally on one side,
the side of truth.
David C. Gross, an author in
his own right, is the editor of
The Jewish Week (New York).
By Beverly Davis
QUESTION:How many
Jewish mothers does it take to
change a light bulb?
ANSWER: (Said with a
"Jewish" inflection): Don’t
worry about; I’ll sit here in the
dark.
QUESTION: How many
JAPS does it take to change a
light bulb?
ANSWER: Two. One to
call Daddy and one to open
a C£in of Tab.
Chances are you’ve already
heard at least one of these
jokes; perhaps you’ve even
laughed at them. Whether or
not they are funny is not the
issue. What is important is
what they imply about Jewish
women. The Jewish mother is
seen as a manipulative in
dividual who gets people to do
what she wants by stimula
ting guilt. The Jewish Ameri
can Princess (JAP) is depicted
as lazy and self-indulgent, a
girl/woman who relies on Dad
dy for everything, while reser
ving her deepest concerns for
such matters as keeping a trim
waist.
It is not surprising that
Jewish women are the subject
of the current (long) wave of
ethnic jokes — all groups have
been subjected to this at one
time or another. What is amaz
ing is the response to these of
the Jewish community. Long
active in vigorously opposing
stereotyping of minorities, and
with an honorable and produc
tive record of working to re
duce prejudice of all kinds in
this country, the community is
strangely silent about the
jokes being made at the ex
pense of Jewish women.
Worse, many seem to embrace
these stereotypes—witness
the “I am a JAP” tee-shirts or,
more painful, children spor
ting the legend “JAP in
training.”
Like all stereotypes, those of
Jewish women are caricatures
of certain traits — some good
and some negative — which,
for whatever reasons, are at
tributed to Jewish women.
Most American Jews today
trace their origins to the
eastern European shtetls, a
harsh world much unlike the
singing environment of “Fid
dler on the Roof.” It was a
world where a man was ex
punc
Worits on ail types
of tires, tub^ or
tubeless
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pected to steep himself in
religious law. The woman had
to be strong, capable, loving
and hard-working; often she
was the main support of the
family economically as well as
spiritually. It was she who
dealt with the outside world of
commerce and maintained a
home in which she passed
down to her children the
cultural and religious practices
— a turn-of-the-century
“Supermom.”
When these women came to
America — the golden land —
their roles changed gradually.
With material success they
were relieved of the need to
work outside the home and
were able to turn their con
siderable energies to matters
of family. The resulting image
of these women was the Yid-
deshe momma, the revered old
lady of the kitchen, famous for
using food as an indication of
her love. But somewhere along
the time-line something went
awry. Like Dr. Jekyll turning
into Mr. Hyde, the Yiddeshe
monmia became the Jewish
mother. So, for example, the
loving concern for her
children, pride in their ac
complishments, and high ex
pectations that were in earlier
years considered attributes,
have now been caricaturized
into the American Jewish
mother, that guilt-producing,
over-protective interfering
force to be dealt with as long
as her child shall live.
While these good “Jewish”
qualities were taken and
twisted to create the Jewish
mother, a different dynamic
was at work in the creation of
that most negative of
stereotypical images of Jewish
women — the Jewish
American Princess. There,
with help from some Jewish
novelists, negative traits were
blended together and affixed
to Jewish women. As a result,
today a young Jewish woman
may be caring, serious and
conscientious, but if she is
even minimally weU-dressed
and well-groomed, chances are
she will be labeled — by Jews
and non-Jews alike — as a
JAP. That implies she is a
spoiled, self-centered,
materialistic and shallow
creature — a manufactured
product that somehow got a
Jewish label. Of course you
don’t have to be Jewish to be
a JAP or a Jewish nu>ther, but
these are images that floated
in our society with a distinct
Jewish tag.
It is ironic that the Jewish
conununity, which has worked
for years to fight the destruc
tive stereotyping of minorities
in this country, are so passive
about raising their voices
against negative stereotypes
of Jewish women. Clearly, it is
time to end the proliferation of
Jewish mother and JAP
“jokes," and we need to apply
the same energies to fight this
stereotyping that we have us
ed for others.
Beverly Davis is President
of B’nai B’rith Women, which
wiU be launching a program »
this theme in mid-September.